Consisting of one new 42-minute track recorded live in guess-where, Lisbon encapsulates the best moments from Keith Fullerton Whitman’s two Kranky-released full-lengths. The track begins in a very Eno-esque environment with processed guitar sine waves slowly crossing one another and creating short moments of tension and release. The slowly building hypnotism stops at the 15-minute mark, when a host of what sound like surge-modulated cicadas begin to swarm and dither. Eventually their buzz becomes a roar that hoists the piece to a triumphant climax, consolidating Whitman’s reputation as a one-man Godspeed You Black Emperor! The piece then devolves into a field recording that sounds like clowns wearing thick rubber shoes playing basketball underwater; it isn’t nearly as entertaining as you’d think. But a dozen minutes of wankery are a small price to pay for a half-hour of perfection.

Assault and batteries After a brief stint in Pittsburgh, guitarist and electronic musician GEOFF MULLEN is back in his native Rhode Island, and the New England music scene is so much the better for it.

Weekend trip It pains me to have to ask this, but looking at the insane list of bands at Boston promoter Dan Shea's upcoming four-night "Homegrown" pysch fest at Church, I have no choice: what exactly does "psych music" mean at this point?

On-line bins In the age of the iPod and the impersonal digital download, the death knell of the traditional record store, piled high with vinyl and CDs, gets sounded with monotonous regularity.

Space cases Perhaps it’s something in the air, but in the last year or so it seems that Boston’s experimental outer limits has seen an analog-synthesizer renaissance.

Mixed signals For those who heard German electronics maestro Felix Kubin slice the air with fried keyboards and speed-tweaked samples at Boston’s Goethe-Institut last November, his return to the States couldn’t come soon enough.

School daze The shows that Tufts University’s Oxfam Café has hosted over the past year-plus are not your typical sweat-drenched college rock shows.

Haus music On a sleepy side street in JP sits the Whitehaus, where, on a recent Saturday evening, muffled electronic gurgles and drones pulse from the basement like the sounds of some secret sci-fi laundromat. It's an experimental electronics night anchored by Boston synth overlord Keith Fullerton Whitman, but it could be any number of scenes that the Whitehaus has welcomed into its living room over the past four years.

Day by Day by Day Two years ago, the Phoenix asked me to write a weekly column about Boston’s growing electronic music and DJ scene.

The more things change As excellent as the show back in January was, I didn't think I would've wanted to pay to see the same thing twice. Slideshow: Matmos and So Percussion at Remis Auditorium at the MFA, October 12, 2006